@YoungCR said: Uh oh, pulling a @drleadfoot? That's cool you found some original hardware for the OZ's. Pretty much! Though by comparison the end result will be a bit more mild lol

Well I haven't posted on here in a while.... but I did actually start working on this project over the summer! I moved into a new house last spring with a nice big garage and I finally have a space to keep this at home which is very exciting. The new plan for it will be to swap the M54 drivetrain from my coupe into this and have a fun street car/summer daily that is more of a comfortable cruiser. This car has been sitting in the barn at the family farm for nearly a decade and unfortunately mice got into it and ruined everything in the interior. I ended up spending a day or two gutting the interior and tossed pretty much everything. Thankfully I have a ton of interior parts from the silver sedan I took apart ages ago. The two big items I am missing at the moment are carpet and the HVAC box, so if anyone has a lead on those bits feel free to pass it along! [image: image.jpeg]

I’ll add pictures Friday, forgot to take some today. E30 made it down and back to the vintage again this spring with zero issues (technically +1 because I bought a new coolant level sensor at the swap meet portion and repaired that longstanding issue while down there!). Was a ton of fun, and running the dragon this year with the entire group was a ball. Sooo many BMW’s, everyone there was wondering WTF was going on. I then parked it for part of June (no A/C makes for a hot commute), then lent it to a friend for his wedding getaway car in mid July. Well, it proceeded to nuke its 1yr old rebuilt alternator on the morning of his wedding day, super fun to find that out when I arrived that evening. Whoops. Got it back, pulled the alternator, had the shop rebuilt it again (needed to rob the rotor out of a spare I had), put it back in, and all is fine. Right? Wrong. It then started to show that it was overheating, at least according to the gauge. It never smelled hot and I couldn’t get it to ever show crazy temps anywhere, but the gauge would slowly fluctuate between middle and 3/4, never going beyond 3/4. I later found that electrical load could cause it to shift almost a full quarter of the gauge. It all just seemed bizarre since the cooling system is pretty much all 2-3yrs old, and is running through a beefy all aluminum radiator with an electric pusher fan augmenting the clutched engine fan. I’m wondering if it’s a gauge issue partially - the ground nuts on the cluster are tight, but I suspect my SI batteries are dying because my tach occasionally drops out for a split second, and the econometer works like 20% of the time. Probably time to have it rebuilt, it’s a good winter expenditure I think. Regardless, I knew I had a slight thermostat housing leak where the two halves meet, so I figured I’d fix that to narrow things down, and toss in some new temp sensors while I was there (the ECU sensor was leaking thru the connector). Swapped in a fresh thermostat, o-ring, and housing cover/bleed screw while I was there too, and drilled a little hole in the top of the tstat to help with bleeding. I filled it and fired it up tonight, and the odd gauge behavior resurfaced for a few minutes but then appears to have gone away. It didn’t seem to correlate with bleeding or an air bubble. Hard to say really. Expecting something like this, I bought myself this thing as peace of mind and a troubleshooting tool: https://e30clusters.com/product/vent-gauge-3-indicators-fahrenheit/ It’s pretty simple to install, looks awesome, works well, and showed me that I had a rock solid coolant temp of 180F at idle even after 20min. Hoping that carries over once I put the car back down and take it for a test rip. I will update when I do so! I had a nice surprise when installing too - apparently some of tbe M20 thermostat housings (maybe just replacement ones?) have 4 bungs for sensors vs the original 2, so all I had to do to add the sender was remove a plug and screw in the new sender with a fresh crush washer. The added bonus is that it’s still reading in the main thermostat housing cavity, so I have an accurate picture of what the temp is doing vs something in the upper rad hose that won’t show an overheat if your thermostat sticks closed. I’ll maybe hook up the oil temp sender over the winter, but for right now I’m not worried about it. I might even repurpose it for a second water temp sensor to monitor temps in the return hose from the radiator or something. Either way, super cool product and I’d highly recommend.

Progress is progress, I’m sure it was awesome to have it see daylight! Congrats on the new place and the garage!

[image: 124DA772-2B22-43BF-AC71-792109F8DAF7_1_105_c.jpeg] [image: 518B80BA-074C-458D-A143-CD3ED2225472_1_105_c.jpeg] Not a whole lot has changed with this car other than racking up the miles! At 182k now, this has been my daily driver for the last 2 years and apparently 26k miles and hasn't skipped a beat. Replaced the steering linkages and idle arm a few months ago but still have some adjustments to do alignment and suspension wise. New parts did not solve the popping noise that I hear when backing and turning out of a parking spot. Unfortunately one of the tie rods I got from FCP was Lemforder china, completely different part so we'll see how long it lasts. I have some more oil leaks to chase down over winter as well and will need a new set of shoes for spring. I did finally go to a car show for the first time in years for the town festival. I moved to a town of 440 people and unbelievably the neighbor down the street has a euro spec 740iL which is pretty neat, there's also few older Audi's in town as well. The Hellcat on the end is the first Hennessy HPE1000 kit installed. 1140hp to the wheels lol.

Been slacking on driving and working on this. I've tossed around the idea of selling but don't think I can do it - it's too competent for the money, I have no idea what I would get to replace it short of a E9X M3, and i neither want to spend the money on that nor need another summer only car. Anywho, some maintenance!  149,000ish/January 2026 - new front struts, along with every associated wear item (bump stops, strut mounts, washers, dust boots, hardware) in the strut assembly. New top hats too cause they're cheap. Not sure if i put it in the last post, but I threw in some new Meyle HD front sway links last year too, so all the front suspension is brand new save the springs themselves and the tie rods, which feel fine. 150,074/This week: Oil change, LM Special Tech 5W-30 and a Mann filter. SO easy to do on these cars, I wish my F250 had a filter insert. So much less mess. I held off on driving this car this winter until late January to keep salt off (I needed to take it to get an emissions test to renew the registration), and I think in addition to some strategic fluid film this summer, I will likely park it next winter fully unless the truck breaks. Not worth smashing the front bumper on an ice chunk or risking some yahoo sliding through an intersection into it, plus salt=gross.

I had some timing cover leaks that I had to fix.  [image: ] Brakes are done. I used stainless hard lines which do not seal as well at the fittings as NiCopp lines. I had couple small leaks. A bit more torque at the fittings fixed the issue.  Clutch hydraulic lines are done and it looks like clutch works ok. I put driveshaft, diff and axles in. Tightened whole front suspension minus tie rods.  I still need to shorten stock e36 tie rods for this setup to work. I have a z4 manual rack that I will put in I just need to figure out the splines. I hope they are the same as e36 rack so I could reuse my Woodward u-joints.   Valve cover lost its beautiful blue color for the more modest wrinkle black [image: ] The stupid intake manifold flange was warped. And my shitty welds were full of pinholes. No wonders that I could not set the idle below 1.2k rpm.  [image: ][image: ]  2 hours later and the flange started too look flat again   [image: ] I spent whole evening chasing pinholes. I think I got them all. I welded new downpipe and rest of the exhaust. Its a 3" going into borla XR-1 muffler to Vibrant super quiet resonator and side exits on the driver side.  I still need to weld a beauty ring for the side exit. I got a 4" stainless  pipe for this.  [image: ][image: ] [image: ]

pynacl said: Also bought an N54 intake manifold and plan to retrofit that when the garage is warm enough (too poor for a heater). Choosing this route over the 330 “3 stage” intake swap to avoid dealing with pesky DISA valves - the power gains are pretty similar: https://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1902505 I understand modifying an N52 is relatively pointless, but I’m doing it for the sheer sport of it. Isnt that why we are all doing BMW things?

I finally got a windshield gasket!

Glad to see it back on the road

Cyrus said: Hey bro, I have your old alpine/modena e36 shoot me a message on instagram @cyrusfara would be cool to meet up Hey! That's great to hear that this car is still local and being enjoyed! Id love to check it out sometime!

I jumped on a set of ZCP wheels over the weekend since they're NLA and don't pop up too often for sale [image: IMG\_1298.jpg]

Carbon lip, there may be Black Friday sales (Adro has my front lip for $616, I might get it as a spare)

Nothing better than a good wash [image: IMG\_1570.jpeg]

99,105 miles After replacing most of the front suspension I took the X5 into EuroTech in Minneapolis for an alignment. They charged $223 which felt pretty high considering these don't have camber adjustment. Anyways, while there they diagnosed an oil leak from the oil filter housing. I knew this thing seeped, but honestly just didn't care much until I read how these N55s like to suck serp belts through the crank seal if they get oily. Out of curiosity I asked them the rough estimate to have that gasket replaced - $1800! I was feeling lazy, but not for that price. I was able to knock it out in roughly an afternoon and it wasn't too bad at all. The only tricky part is BMW designed it so that you cannot reach the 3rd bolt holding the housing to the block without removing the intake manifold. Other than that the trickiest part was just managing the fluids and trying not to spill - once again those giant 500ml Amazon syringes came in clutch to suck most the coolant out of the reservoir before starting. Also de-greased the hell out of the front of the engine while I was in there, but didn't take any great photos. While in there I replaced: - Oil filter housing gasket - Oil cooler gasket - Oil pressure sensor - Accessory drive belt - Belt idler pulley - Belt tensioner - All mounting hardware [image: IMG\_8764.JPG] [image: IMG\_8788.JPG][image: IMG\_8763.JPG][image: IMG\_8787.JPG][image: IMG\_8776.JPG][image: IMG\_8796.JPG][image: IMG\_8801.JPG]

YoungCR said: Welcome back stranger, what’s in the garage these days? E30 is still there but looking to get sold before winter.  We moved about 2 years ago into a new bigger place but with kids getting older (10 and 13 now) priorities have shifted.  If anyone’s interested LMK, I’ll get a FS post up sometime soon!

How many miles on the motor?

Did a track day at Blackhawk last year.  Could only keep it in 4th gear to keep the RPMs down so oil wouldn't blow out of my catch cans. Still clipped 120mph on the straight and had a blast! On newly mounted R888s all around.  Also, amassing parts! 🫣 Car is running great outside of a power steering leak. Removed the ABS pump.

Been a bit since I updated this.  The first Partee Racing motor snapped the crank and he built me a new motor of the same exact spec without hesitation.  Currently working some tuning issues out as we switched tuners.